On Wednesday, July 15, Amazon plans to launch a one-day shopping event that it’s calling Prime Day. Because we’re expecting Amazon to announce a high volume of deals that day, we’re applying the same maniacal level of deal scanning we do all year long to pick out the Prime Day deals that are actually worth taking advantage of.

The Best Deals We Can Find

We will update this post with relevant deals right here. Be sure to follow us on Twitter, too, for quick tweets to lightning deals. Deals labeled DOTD are “Deals of the Day” and good for 24 hours or until sold out.

Over a period of 15 hours, our team scanned a total of 3,228 deals and found 35 worth posting.

More About Our Favorite Deals

As the Wirecutter and Sweethome teams have learned after scanning hundreds of thousands of deals (yes, literally) over the last few years, not all deals are as they seem. Our team of deal experts, as well as Wirecutter and Sweethome editors, will be taking shifts and spending our Prime Day watching the lightning deals as they come up in order to ferret out the best ones to pass on to our readers.

Starting at 12 a.m. Pacific Time (3 a.m. Eastern Time), new and existing Prime members will be able to take advantage of “more deals than Black Friday,” according to the company. Amazon promises that deals will post rapidly and frequently, and we’ll be posting the best ones to a liveblog on our Deals page as well as on Twitter. As usual, we won’t be telling you about every single deal that comes down the pike, but we will tell you about the ones that are actually worth grabbing. Be sure to follow us if you want to stay on top of the good stuff during Prime Day, because lightning deals don’t last forever and can sell out quick.

What is Amazon Prime?

Prime is the Amazon service that allows members to get “free” two-day shipping on about 20 million eligible items from Amazon’s warehouse. No need to worry about a minimum order size or a cap on the number of deliveries—from a bar of bath soap to a new TV, it will arrive on your doorstep within two days with Prime shipping.

You’ve probably noticed we usually link to Amazon when making recommendations in our guides. As editors, we’ve used Amazon’s Prime service for many years—since long before The Wirecutter existed. We think the convenience of Prime’s two-day shipping combined with Amazon’s customer service makes it the most trusted way to shop online for most people.

What is a lightning deal?

Lightning deals happen on Amazon every day, and tons will appear on Prime Day. They often offer deep discounts on a specific item, and each deal lasts for a set amount of time (usually a few hours) or once stock on that item runs out, whichever happens first. Once you claim a deal, you have a certain amount of time to purchase before your claim expires.

If a deal is sold out, you should join the waitlist (if it isn’t already full), because you might have another chance to claim the deal if another buyer’s claim times out. The good: Lightning deals can offer deep, deep discounts you wouldn’t otherwise see. The bad: They tend to include a lot of crap, while the best lightning deals get snatched up within minutes.

Is it worth signing up for Amazon Prime for this?

Prime, which typically costs $99 per year, allows you to take advantage of the free two-day shipping available on many items. If you place roughly 15 to 20 orders on Amazon within a year and upgrade to that two-day shipping, the cost of the membership begins to balance out. It tips in your favor even more if you share your Prime membership with up to four other members of your household, because they can take advantage of the shipping benefit without having to pay another $99 annual fee. If you are considering the total cost/benefit of possibly joining Amazon Prime, remember that, to sweeten the deal, Amazon also throws in streaming movies (its version of Netflix) as well as streaming music and a lending library for Kindle owners.

If you’re eager to check out Prime for Prime Day (and beyond), you can sign up for a 30-day trial to give it a spin before committing your $99. Other ways to get Prime include a six-month free trial plus 50 percent off for students with a .edu email address. Up to four people in one household can share Prime.

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